The Ghostwriter

by Julie Clark

And of Jack Randall, the son of Danny’s best friend, Mark. Jack, a boy who’d also been raised by someone traumatized by that day in 1975.

Annoying sentence fragments

“No one knew Poppy and Danny the way I did. Not their friends, not even our parents. When I die, they’ll die with me, without ever having gotten to live. This is the least I can do for them.”

There’s a reason historians rely so heavily on primary sources. Because human memory is flawed.

I’m beginning to realize that once you lie about your past, you wall yourself off from the present.

“He never showed up for me.” Jack gives me a sympathetic look. “Relationships aren’t transactional.”

About his denial that he was the father.

Half this book is made up of deoendent clauses... Lazy bad writing

Trying—and failing—to reach Poppy, who was crumpled on her bed in a pool of blood.’”

This isnt triggering???

it all clicks into place. I look up at her, our eyes locking. Understanding passing between us, at what she’d done for me. For us. For Poppy. What we can never reveal. An unspoken promise I will keep for the next fifty years.

Olivia is also the ghostwriter of Vincent Taylor’s memoir, All Her Beautiful Days,

Not a ghostswitder if everyone knows she wrote it

You did what you had to do, Lydia, he’d say to me, over and over again.

“I couldn’t bear to watch you age past her. You were a daily reminder of who she never got to become.”

When

Poppy was born, she was beauty and grace and light. And she continues to be that, all her beautiful days.